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The best thing about rehearsing for this year's Woodie Awards:
Soundcheck for The Dead Weather. Jack White = Pure Genius. (Even though he wouldn't let me film it.)
The second best thing about rehearsing for this year's show:
The bike messengers Matt & Kim brought.
Eight messengers followed Matt & Kim on bicycles from Brooklyn to the Roseland Ballroom. The plan was for Diplo to spin a wicked set, then Matt & Kim and the bike messengers would arrive at Roseland, ditch their bikes, blast onto the stage, and the messengers would undress to become a naked chorus.
We are perfectionists, of course, so we just had to rehearse this over and over and over to make sure they were, you know, undressing at the right time and everything....
After their actual performance at the Woodies, Kim (Stolz) caught up with Matt & Kim. Matt got Kim to admit she likes getting naked more than she lets on. Then they talk about the size of Kim's chest...

The Woodie Awards hit MTV, MTV2, mtvU and in hi-def on Palladia, December 4th at 10pm. But why wait? This stuff's leaking out as we speak...
Leighton Meester and Cyndi Lauper present Woodie Of The Year:

Mary-Louise Parker, Amber Tamblyn, Zooey Deschanel, Leighton Meester...we had to make sure they could each drink as much as they wanted to at the Woodie Awards last week. Besides the performances, massive consumption of alcohol is a hallmark of the Woodies. So I was happy to have helped set up the bar, and my dad will be impressed I came even this close to a power tool...

Tom Lenz's set design for this year's Woodie Awards was more ambitious than we'd ever attempted. And it turned out to be my favorite he's ever done for us. The build was kinda intense.
Once we are done cutting the show (it airs at 10pm December 4th on MTV, MTV2, mtvU and Palladia, we'll really get to show everyone how beautiful the set looked in our cameras. Here's a peek at the set being built on Tuesday and Wednesday....

Tough to figure out lighting and what happens visually in the song's bridge and climax, but lighting designer Chris Lande, Set Designer Tom Lenz, and the rest of the Woodies production team just nailed a really powerful way to kick off the show, which is at Roseland Ballroom in about 20 hours. We are putting on Matt & Kim first, opening the show. A spot Lupe Fiasco and Patrick Stump got last year.
MTV and mtvU are reporting about Matt & Kim's rehearsal, as we speak. I was about 3 feet from the band all night, and they sounded amazing, especially with backing vocals by -- shhh don't tell -- 8 bike messengers who transform into their chorus.
Check out these photos from tonight's rehearsal. If they're like this in rehearsal, imagine what they will be like at the real thing.
Here's Matt & Kim, taking a break as we build the set around them: